California says Amazon pressured retailers to boost prices on their websites to not undercut it California's attorney general alleges that Amazon uses its market power to pressure vendors like Levi Strauss and retailers like Walmart to raise prices on their websites.

California's attorney general alleges that Amazon uses its market power to pressure vendors like Levi Strauss and retailers like Walmart to raise prices on their websites.

Governance at the Technological Frontier: Translating Research into Policy for AI Oversight This workshop will address a central challenge in AI policy: designing regulatory interventions that are both evidence-based and adaptive. We will focus on two guiding questions: (1) how to strengthen...

Join us for a special workshop on Governance at the Technological Frontier: Translating Research into Policy for AI Oversight.

Keynotes by California State Senator Jerry McNerney and Suresh Venkatasubramanian.

Thursday, 4/30, 1–5:30 p.m. Registration required.

simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/go...

There's a global race to secure EV battery gigafactories & reduce reliance on China.

But not all clean-tech projects are created equal. Some generate good jobs & domestic capacities, others produce ecological harm & low value-added enclaves.

New paper & thread 👇
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A look at EU efforts to cut reliance on US tech; study: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google hold ~70% of EU cloud and US vendors get 80% of enterprise software spend (Politico)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Americans spend $146 billion and 11.6 billion hours doing their taxes, and most of it is just filling out paperwork | Fortune There are more than 10,000 forms you have to sort through to file your taxes, and the fear of going to jail over a mistake has never been higher.

Individual tax returns cost American taxpayers a combined $146 billion in time and out-of-pocket expenses this year—roughly $576 per person in labor hours alone, according to a new analysis from Postal. https://bit.ly/47XcqBx

Nobody who followed the turn toward “patriotic startup capital” for the past 5 years is surprised about THAT manifesto. It’s just the summary of key talking points swirling around in the new defence tech space. But please know that it forms part of the strategic capture of our collective attention.

Let’s go, Xavier!

Today, I had the honor of being sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives — a moment I don’t take lightly.

To the people of NJ-11, thank you.

Censorship and Surveillance at US Universities The night before the start of the Fall 2025 semester, facilities workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill quietly boarded up a pro-Palestine mural. The mural, created by art students...

Excellent piece by @torinmonahan.bsky.social on surveillance and censorship on campus post encampment, covering investigations, crowdsourced "complaint and syllabi-exposing systems" and more that make campuses less safe for most.

www.merip.org/2026/04/cens...

Years ago read about how the Japanese cell phone industry developed features and standards that could only sell to the local market, dubbed “Galapagos syndrome.”

Unless there’s a dramatic turnaround, seems likely that poor leadership and bad policy are driving US auto industry toward the same fate.

Didier Fassin - Ainsi pensait Michel Foucault

Enquête sur une philosophie pour notre temps

À paraître en septembre aux éditions La Découverte

Power without accountability: The Palantir manifesto The problems with our tech philosopher kings

New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally.
It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

We’re defending Western Civilization by kicking Plato and Shakespeare out of university classes.

Breaking news: motorbike beats bicycle

“‘The negative sentiment around AI has been growing steadily, and what’s changed is that the public has developed both the vocabulary and the lived experience to name what’s bothering them,’ @alondra.bsky.social says.”🧪

The damage that Trump has done to the federal government now has a number: $165.6 BILLION. www.govexec.com/workforce/20...

Pope cope

Year 2, Week 16 Apr 11-17 - tomato/xitomatl

Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪 

Apr 17 (Year 2, Week 16)
- new CDC director nominated w/ credentials!
- closure of Hampshire College. Other schools at risk
- changes to federal loans for grad students
& much more

buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

How Viktor Orbán Loses | Journal of Democracy Opposition leader Péter Magyar overcame the rigged system that Orbán created and used it against him. The old playbook of disinformation and dirty tricks was no match for a disciplined campaign that…

Here’s my analysis of how challenger Peter Magyar was able to overcome the rigged election system to win in Hungary. www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...

A federal judge in Illinois today ruled that the Trump administration improperly coerced Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking apps in violation of the First Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

UC Berkeley CS major enrollment on pace to drop by 59% as part of nationwide trend The decline in campus computer science graduates mirrors a trend across the UC system, with CS major enrollment across the university decreasing in 2025 for the first time since the

www.dailycal.org/news/campus/...

Sat down for an interview with Marlene Daut for @publicbooks.bsky.social on my edition & translation of "......And the Dogs Were Silent" by A. Césaire. Always fun to talk to Marlene. Could not ask for a better interlocutor!

Cc @dukepress.bsky.social

www.publicbooks.org/courage-or-f...

In Angola, Pope Faces the Legacy of Colonialism

In Angola, Pope Leo XIV Faces the Legacy of Slavery www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/w...

This is crazy. Just open-air larceny.

Another example demonstrating that the federal science and research ecosystem is being seriously damaged regardless of what’s ultimately appropriated

Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media The artificial-intelligence-generated fake influencers have surged on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in an apparent bid to hook conservative voters.

In the months leading up to the midterm elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring A.I.-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace. Several accounts have already amassed thousands followers. Some of the posts have more than half a million views.

Can Sponge Cities Save Us from the Coming Floods? As the planet gets warmer and the rains fall harder, the future of flood control is looking less like a wall and something more like a park.

As the planet gets hotter, cities around the world are experiencing rain storms with record-smashing intensity.

I spent the last few months visiting places -Copenhagen, Hoboken, & NYC- that have adopted a counterintuitive idea: the safest city is one that can take water in. In @newyorker.com

Data centers are a physical manifestation of AI infrastructure and they've become a flashpoint precisely because they're tractable. They exist in specific places, consume specific resources, can be seen and pointed to. I spoke with @lorenaoneil.com @rollingstone.com about our urgent AI reckoning.

Voting on spy powers at 2am will definitely help with trust in the government!

Elite higher ed has many problems, but the key factor driving down trust is political. Look at the graph - backlash against costs, admissions, etc. can't explain the changes we see. We should still reform our institutions and refocus on our core mission, but blindly blaming ourselves is abuser logic